


Rabbit Heart

by sibley (ferns)



Series: Heartlines [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coping, F/M, Family, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Polyamory, Trans Cisco Ramon, Trans Dawn Allen, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, supportive families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Barry slips while holding his children for the first time. And again throughout their lives. That doesn't stop him from being the best father he can possibly be.





	Rabbit Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Dawn is a trans girl, as is Cindy. Cisco is a trans man. It features pretty heavily with regards to Dawn.

“Barry?” Iris says gently. She sounds absolutely exhausted for good reason, and Barry’s hardly holding it together himself in this hospital chair, looking down at his run-down wife and tense boyfriend who’s been crying nonstop for the last hour. “Do you wanna hold one of them?”

Barry nods mutely, eyes filling with tears as he numbly accepts his older son, looking down at the tiny features that-oh, god, it’s like looking at baby pictures of Iris, except this time there are more of Barry’s own features in it. He’s _perfect._

And then Barry slips.

He clings to his son like a lifeline, looking at him with wide eyes as he cries openly while the timeline moves all around him and-

_“Dawn-no, not Don-whichever-you know who you are!” Barry crossed his arms._

_Warm lips pressed against Barry’s as somebody laughed softly against his mouth in a way that filled Barry’s stomach with love and made his toes curl a little. “Looks like you found someone worth taking a beating for after all, huh?”_

_“I love you, honey, I really, really do, but I don’t think this is something we can pick for her,” Cisco smiled, squeezing Barry’s hand gently to alleviate his worries. “She’ll make the right choice, I just know it.”_

_Barry sighed and adjusted his cowl. “The League’s dealing with an emergency in the upper atmosphere. A disabled satellite. By the time they can get a flier out here, Spitfire could be long gone.”_

_Barry squeezed the pictures tightly in his hand as his knuckles pressed against the glass separating him and his father. “Listen to me, Dad… Just listen… In Holden’s earliest statements, he mentions an accomplice… More than that, someone who_ compelled _him. What if these weren’t the rantings of a lunatic. What if there was someone else!”_

_“Barry, I… I wasn’t just an old friend.” Darryl took a deep breath and Barry’s eyes went wide. No. No. Darryl wasn’t saying what Barry thought he was saying. Was he? “You mom and I had history.”_

Barry grips on tighter, but not tight enough to hurt his son. “Cisco, m’sorry-slips-”

Cisco’s there in a second, handing their other son back to Iris from where he’s been softly purring to him the entire time while openly sobbing. “Give him to me, Barry.”

He’s not leaving it up for argument, and Barry understands why. He would _never_ hurt their children on purpose, and while he’s never hurt Iris or Cisco while slipping he doesn’t want to take the chance. Hands shaking, he hands their son back over to his boyfriend.

The slipping stops and Barry takes some deep breaths. “I’m good now. I-” He wipes away the tears. “I made that. Or I helped make that. Make him. He’s-he’s _perfect.”_

Barry looks at their two children. Identical in almost every way, but he can see that one of them has his eyes already while the other looks just a touch more like Iris. They’re absolutely one-hundred-percent perfect in every single way. With their tiny bodies and miniscule noses and ears and itty-bitty fingers. He wants to hold his other son, hold all four of the other people in this room, and never ever let go of them. Protect them at all costs.

“The one you were holding is Henry,” Iris murmurs. They agreed on names before, back when they found out that they were having twin boys. Not sure which twin would have what name, but… Knew what the names would be. The three of them made sure to pick perfect ones. She kisses the smaller one’s forehead. “And here’s Don.”

Cisco presses his lips together and laughs wetly. “God, he’d love this,” Cisco says. “Would tease me about being a father every single day.”

Barry kisses his cheek. Cisco doesn’t talk about Dante a lot, but there had never really been a question of who they were going to name their other son after. “Which one gets Joseph?” He says instead. “You know that one will be Joe’s secret favorite.”

For a moment, Barry’s not afraid of slipping. It’ll be okay. His family’s there. He’s alright with just existing with them. Just _being._

It’s the most at home in his body he’s felt in a very, very long time.

* * *

The talk about whether or not they should even have kids was a difficult one to have.

Cisco hadn’t even thought that he was going to be a part of it, still unsure with how their dynamic had changed after Barry and Iris had gotten married. But Barry and Iris hadn’t given a second thought to including him in it.

And it turned out that all three of them had wanted kids.

But it just got more complicated from there.

They all knew that Cisco didn’t want to be and couldn’t handle being pregnant, which both of them understood fully, which meant that Iris was going to be, but with Barry’s powers they didn’t know if he could even _have_ kids. Cindy told her apologetically that she would offer to be the other biological parent if HRT hadn’t made her infertile. And then when they found out that Barry _could_ have kids, his second thoughts kicked in.

While Caitlin was positive that the slipping was a result of Barry’s time in the speedforce and therefore not something that he could pass down to his kids, he was worried about its effect on their lives for other reasons. The slipping happened at random, sometimes for almost hours at a time. He didn’t want to be alone with the kids and then accidentally neglect them because he started slipping. Just because he _hadn’t_ hurt someone during the episodes didn’t mean that it wouldn’t one day happen.

Iris and Cisco promised him that it would be okay. If he still didn’t want to have kids, they could wait awhile before talking about it again, but they had pretty much completely neutralized all of the triggers at this point and would deal with new ones as they appeared. (And that while the decisions that Cindy and Cisco made as a couple were intrinsically tied to Barry and Iris, if Cindy and Cisco wanted to have kids together via adoption or a surrogate, it wasn’t Barry’s place to tell them that they couldn’t despite being Cisco’s equal partner. But that was a topic of discussion for another time.)

In the end, Barry had realized that even if it was selfish of him, he wanted kids. He wanted his family to be even bigger.

They had dealt with the slipping for this long, and they’d keep on dealing with it as it came.

* * *

Henry didn’t know what was wrong with the Flash.

She was six years old and sitting on her bed when the Flash showed up, vibrating and crying and whispering about stars.

Henry didn’t know what was wrong, but she knew exactly what to do.

She crawled over to him, resting her chin on one of her hands as she reached out with her other to touch the Flash’s shoulder as he curled up in the corner of the bedroom that she shared with her twin brother and started trying to write with an invisible pen on the walls. “Mr. Flash? Are you okay?”

Henry knew it was her dad underneath the cowl. Her Daddies were superheroes and her Mommy was even _better_ than a superhero and her Auntie Cyn let her run around the house with scissors taped together with clay on the tip so it wasn’t a _real_ knife but it still kind of was one and that was what made it fun. That was just a fact of life. But when Daddy was wearing the Flash suit then you were supposed to call him the Flash so that nobody would find out his secret identity.

Henry and Don thought that was dumb. Their Daddy was _awesome,_ why shouldn’t people know how great he was? It was the same with their other dad. He was the best in the whole world and it was _dumb_ that they were supposed to pretend he wasn’t.

Mommy said that they would understand when they were older, but Henry thought she was plenty old enough to understand that it didn’t make any sense to keep such cool things a secret.

“Mr. Flash?” Henry poked his shoulder again. She frowned. “Mommy’s not here. She’s on a ‘hot date’ with other Daddy. And Auntie Cyn’s not here. And Uncle Wally took Donnie out for a run around the state.” She offered him the markers she’d been drawing with. Purple and red and yellow, her favorite colors. “Do you wanna draw with me?”

He snatched the markers out of her hand and started scribbling on the wall. Henry frowned even deeper. You weren’t supposed to draw on the walls unless Mommy said it was okay and she never said it was okay. Sometimes Auntie Cyn did but Auntie Cyn also let Henry practice wearing makeup which Mommy got upset about because that makeup was expensive and Henry had a perfectly good kid set for her to use. So Auntie Cyn always cleaned the walls before Mommy could see.

She watched him draw for a few minutes before going back to her paper. Henry drew some lightning bolts. The Flash drew stars. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

He looked at Henry and smiled wide before pulling his cowl back. “Look at the stars, baby, _look at them…_ They’re so gorgeous tonight. Almost as gorgeous as you, Iris.”

“‘M not Mommy,” Henry reminds him. She draws a purple flower on her father’s cheek. “Iris.”

“Iris,” Barry agrees. Not the Flash anymore. Just her dad. Not that they’re different people. The mask doesn’t make someone a different person. Not like Mr. Al and Mr. Al, who they’re not supposed to talk about because Ms. Rita says that he’s their _special secret babysitter_ who helps her watch them, is two different people. “Pretty, pretty irises. I want that at our wedding. I know it’s dumb and cliche, Cisco, and I don’t care. How many people have died, Hal? Dad? Dad, I know you didn’t do those things-Dawn, don’t touch-”

His breathing stuttered and Henry tilted her head. “Daddy?”

“Henry, sweetie?” Barry swallowed thickly. “Did I slip? Did I have one of my episodes?”

Henry considered for a second and nodded. “Uncle Wally and Don will be back soon.”

“I-I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Barry whispered.

“No. You just drew on the walls with my markers which means Mommy is gonna be mad.” Henry scooted forward and gave her dad a hug. “I want my name to be Dawn. I just picked it.”

“Don? Like your brother?” The corner of Barry’s mouth quirked up.

“No, like-like sunrise Dawn. I like that.” She didn’t mention it was because of how it had made her feel so _good_ to hear her dad say it even if he hadn’t really been directing it at her. It didn’t matter, anyway. “You said I could pick any name I wanted n’ I pick Dawn.”

Barry started laughing as he pressed his forehead against his daughter’s. “Dawn, huh?”

She was okay. He hadn’t hurt her. Thank god, the slipping hadn’t hurt her.

* * *

“Ready to go for a run?” Barry squeezed Don’s shoulder with a smile.

He grinned back up at him. “I bet I beat Dawn to Antarctica.”

“You’re not gonna beat me to Antarctica!” Dawn shoved him playfully. He’d outgrown her a few years ago, though only by a few inches.

“Bet I do!” Don took off running.

“Hey! Dad, he’s cheating!” Dawn sprinted after him.

Barry rolled his eyes and sighed. Wally could _more_ than handle watching the city on his own. “Kids, wait for me!”

The last slip had been yesterday at one in the morning. They’d long since lost count of how many there had been, though they still kept up the dissociation log.

He still hadn’t hurt anybody.

Barry picked up the pace as he hit the ocean, chasing the twin streaks ahead of him.

He wouldn’t trade this life for the world.


End file.
